INTERVIEW: Emeli Sandé on her remarkable fourth album 'Let's Say for Instance': "I found the whole process super empowering. It just feels like my most personal project"

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Olivia Lifungula

Emeli Sandé has been a major force in the British music scene since she broke through in 2009 as the featured artist on the Chipmunk hit ‘Diamond Rings’. She then hit number 2 in the UK with her first solo single ‘Heaven’ before scoring global hits with songs such as ‘Next To Me’ and ‘Beneath Your Beautiful’ (with Labrinth).

Today she returns with her fourth studio album Let’s Say for Instance, her first release with an independent record label. It is a remarkably accomplished release which has an overwhelming sense of an artist breaking free and finally becoming comfortable - and confident - within herself. Musically, it is her most diverse release for years. There is a shift back to the electronic pop which marked her earliest releases, but also sees her experimenting with classical, disco, and RnB.

The album’s release has been preceded by six singles, including the new single ‘Ready To Love’, released yesterday which is a delicious synth-pop track with hints of disco presided over by Sandé remarkable voice.

“I’m so proud of this album and can’t wait to release it,” she says. “I’ve felt free to express myself more naturally both lyrically and musically in this album and my wish is that it will be an uplifting experience for each listener and that they will get to know me on a much deeper level.”

Let’s Say for Instance is arguable Sandé’s greatest work. Personal, warm, challenging and immersive, it is a joy to listen and the type of album to savour in a deep end-to-end listen. You will want to return to it again and again. We recently caught up with Sandé to find out more about the creation of the album.

Hi Emeli! Let’s Say for Instance is just such a beautiful piece of work. I would love to hear from you about it and what it means to you.
This album really means so much to me, because I took a lot of risks, followed my instinct and just going for what genres felt good. I kind of risked it all on this album, it's the first album I've made independently, once it was made I found Chrysalis records, they loved it. It was great to approach a company with the album already formed, I found the whole process super empowering. It just feels like my most personal project, I'm just so excited to give it to the people and see what they think because I feel this time I'm really handing myself over. I've kind of finally caught up with myself in terms of life and music. At times, I've felt my music is a bit ahead of me, and I'm kind of catching up in my life. But this time it really feels like both have come parallel with each other. It's just me in through the music.

I'm so glad you said that before you were either ahead or behind, or you weren't sure. But this is like, this is me. Deal with it.
That's a perfect way to describe it, it just feels like this big relief. You get into this mindset of trying to make things over perfect, or trying to be over controlling of things. That's the biggest lesson I learned from the past few years - we really don't have control. Any minute now someone can say you have to stay in your house, or that you no longer have a job, you can no longer perform. When I realised, essentially I have no control, [I thought] let me just be and let the music breathe and it is what it is. Maybe people like it, maybe they won't, but it's allowed me just to relax and stop trying to control everything.

One of my favourite tracks on the album is 'Oxygen' and I just love it on so many levels. I was reading that this was a track record a whole ago but wasn’t considered right for you at the time. Can you talk to me a little bit about it's back story?
My publisher had put me in touch with this really great producer called Fallen and the first time we met was in LA. And, you know, being in the sun it brings out just a different side of your personality! I was there on the rooftop in the sun, just listening to this beat, which I thought was amazing. The beat by itself really did capture an emotion and atmosphere before I even started the song and it was just one of those songs where it just kind of came out. I didn't really have to think that much about the concept, or what I was doing, it was just truly just translating it all into music, that emotion. I love listening to it, it's quite like effortless, but it's one of my favourite songs. But then when I got back to the UK, people were like, ‘Yeah, it's cool but we need more like 'Next To Me', or we need something more’. At the time, I was quite frustrated because I really wanted that song out, and I really thought it was a special one. But now I realised it just wasn't the right time. So now it's finally found the right time and I love the response it's had. Having it out has been really special and that's one of the tracks where people will get to know the deepest essence of me.

You were just so incredibly big and you were this international sound of Rule Britannia for such a period of time and I guess that summer LA sounds was just too much for some people ‘that's not the face of England’.
Yeah it’s hard. it's great to have success, but then having success that early on does restrict where you can go, and people get a bit scared about taking risks. Let's say the first album wasn't as successful as it was, by my second, third, fourth, fifth, it would have been cool to try new things out, experiment and build. So I feel really lucky that finally on this fourth album, I can go back to the beginning and take risks again, because there's not so much scrutiny and pressure on it. I'm enjoying that, that freedom.

You became very successful very quickly and I imagine as wonderful as it is, it must be quite confronting so early on in your career, particularly when faced with ‘well, what do I want to do?’ How have you found that element of it and have you been at all fearful of how this would turn out?
A little bit, but having another two albums on the major record label [after the success of debut album Our Version Of Events) was good for me to experience all the sides of it. How they treat you when you're successful, how they treat when you're not. It was never totally bad, but you just see the change. I could see through the industry in that sense. For me, it was more a case of deconstructing what I'd created. At the beginning, I felt I had to be something. I had the hair, I had just come from school and now I'm singing 'Next To Me' and it was really wonderful. But I didn't realise that once you built this thing, and if it becomes successful, you really have to stay within the lines you've drawn for yourself. Over the past few years, definitely since I was about 27, 28, I started to think ‘I need to deconstruct this, I need to know who I am. Do people recognise me without the hair?’ I don't want to be in any way a gimmick anymore. Not that I ever felt like that, but it did feel that there was a look that went with Emeli Sandé and I wanted to get beyond that. It's taken many years to get to this point where I can shave the hair, I can actually trust what's inside of me, as opposed to what it looks like, or trying to market myself. It was so nice to let go of that pretence.

I want to ask you about the track 'There Isn't Much'. it is such a beautiful song. This is just pure joy and love. Can you tell me a little bit about it, because it's just the best.
Thank you. I wrote this song a few years ago with Naughty Boy and another producer Shakavelli. I love working with Naughty Boy, because we've known each other from the very beginning, we were the underdogs at the very beginning. It was us against the world. He has the same studio, so it always feels like I'm going home when I get there. He has no rules, which I love, so we will talk all day, then we'll start creating at like 1am. Because he knows my performance and my voice so well, he can really capture moments without me exhausting myself in it. If I'm left to record myself, I'll go over thousands of times trying to get the perfect take, but I might miss the actual essence of the song. Whereas he's kind, ‘I think we've got it’. He knows how to get the best out of me and still keep that natural flow. That song came from them playing me that beat, I love the bass on it and it just gave me that feeling and then I just wrote the song on top. It feels so, so good to finally get it out. I also loved making the video with Marie Kay, it was such a natural process. She's like, ‘yeah, we're wrapped.’ I thought, ‘wow, that's the best video I've ever done!’ Usually you're there for days! Everything's just falling in place with that song so perfectly.

It's got such a joyous element to it as well. Likewise with 'Family'. I read the most beautiful YouTube comment of someone who's written on 'Family', “I used to be a fan. But after hearing this masterpiece, I'm a whole air conditioner.”
Yeah, I love that one, that was really clever!

'Family' was such a great release. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
That song came from the freedom of being in lockdown. I was working with an engineer called Henri Davies, and he started producing with me. I said ‘I really love this Elgar performance by (cellist) Jacqueline du Pré’ and he says, ‘why don't you just sing along with that favourite part, where she goes crazy on the cello’. And that's what we put at the end to build the chorus. We could just do the most insane things I would never do usually if I'm overthinking making an album, such as the auto tuning on the vocal. I was excited just to do whatever I wanted. We chose it to be the first single because the lyric is all about once you've got your life straight, and once your family is good, only then you can actually go on and enjoy the other parts of your life. When you go home and things are a mess or emotional, you're just not stable. Everything is hard to enjoy no matter how successful you get. So I wanted to open the album with that line - family's good, the sun is out, cool, now we can move forward. I love the response from it.

You've seemed to have created such joy out of such an odd time in our lives. Have you just embraced this global shift and decided to apply your art to it, or were you just like, ‘I'm just going to keep creating, and sometimes it's going to be sad, and sometimes it's going to be great’?
It was definitely a conscious decision to try and offer something to people that will make them feel better, and also just remind to them of the beauty of being human, being alive. We get so much news that's depressing and dark and with all the division that's going on, it's such a shame to see people forgetting that actually, to be alive in the first place is quite a miracle. For us to be able to communicate is incredible. I really wanted to offer in this album ‘okay, let's have a bit fun’. If we can make people dance, let's do that. If we can make people feel something, yes you can. Let's just make sure that it's not necessarily for me expressing my introspective emotions, this is more projecting outwards. That was the hardest part, that connection with the crowd, the only way you could do it was through the internet, which is cool and it's nice that we're in such an advanced place technologically but there's nothing that can replace sitting next to somebody or being on stage and the sweat in the room. Just smelling other human beings. I really wanted to remind people that we're super humans, this is fantastic. Let's just get over these little details and remind yourself of what's really going on. It helped me making the music through the process but that's always been my attitude. My whole family, we're just always optimistic, even if it's a tough situation. How I grew up as a kid feeling very different, I always tried to think let's not let it get us down, let's try and find the strength or the positive side to this. That brought more of that out during these past couple of years for sure.

Throughout your career, you've always been a voice, and for whatever reason people have always looked to you and you have been a definite role model for so many people. With this album, you've pushed that positivity, and that hope forward, in a very joyful, an approachable way. It's no recording artist's position at all to be a political driver, but because of where we're at, they're the people we look to. And because of social media, their voices are accessible, you have direct contact. For you personally, how imperative, do you feel that tool is that you have, and also does that responsibility ever daunt you?
I definitely take the responsibility pretty seriously because music for me, it's always quite a spiritual process. I always feel something beyond me is happening, especially when I hear what the songs mean to other people. So I don't take that for granted. And I don't necessarily see what I do is as just entertainment, I really want to speak and messages that can hopefully influence people's lives in a positive way. It does get a little bit daunting, because sometimes you just don't know what to say. The same as everybody else, we're being engulfed with so much information and so many points of views, and to have the bravery to speak your truth can be quite daunting. On social media, everything's so fast and we sometimes get confused that we all need to be moving that fast as well. The biggest lesson I've taken is you do know what to say, but you just need to stop and think and really connect with what's beneath all of this frenzy. I enjoy having a voice, I enjoy having a platform and I try to use it the best way I can. Now I'm just trying to tell myself when you have something to say make sure you know what it is and make sure you really thought about it because it's very easy to just rush into something and not have the full picture

Obviously we have this glorious, glorious album Let’s Say for Instance out now, and you also have some live shows coming up, can you tell me a little bit about what's coming up for you?
Yes, I have a tour starting this month. I'm going to do two versions of the show, one version just piano and vocals, and the other version with the band. And I can't wait to go and perform, I can't wait now that people have heard this new music. I did three shows in January, just sat at the piano and I found it so liberating, because I could really convey what was on my mind and in my heart on that day, and really connect with the crowd in a way that I've never really been able to do before. I'm excited just to be more intimate, more raw in that sense, and also just play the new songs. I just want it to be a big party. It's called The Brighter Days Tour and I want people to leave feeling like ‘okay, that was worth coming’ and to feel lifted in a way as well.

Let’s Say for Instance is out now via Chrysalis Records. You can download and stream here.

To keep up with all things Emeli Sandé you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.

Live Shows - tickets here